I've spent quite a lot of time with Abyss Odyssey now, but there's still a lot of things that are unclear to me. So here's a list.

If I level up, is it just my health that goes up, or my damage too?

If an area is rated hard, does it mean the enemies have better AI, more health, more damage, or all of these? Do bosses become harder in hard areas too?

I've defeated the warlock multiple times but I'm still not sure what triggers his mask to break. Every time I kill him, more pieces break off, but when I go back into the abyss the mask is less broken than it was before. Does it matter if you go into the same abyss layout as before?

Is there a way to save my game in purgatory, after defeating the warlock, so I don't lose my items?

Does the living beast appear just as often when you go to the entrance after dying as it does after defeating the warlock? Is it supposed to make win streaks harder?

Katrien has this one special move where she puts her sword behind her back and a glint appears. What does that do? The peacock warrior also has that glint with two of his special moves but his moves do damage.

That creepy hatted guy who floats through walls, what is his deal? Does he appear when you spend too long in one level, like Spelunky's ghost? Can you capture his soul?

The Tirana Demon requires quite a high level to capture, but I have a hard time using it effectively in combat. What tactics should I use when fighting with it?

I really like the game but it could use a bit more clarity. If someone could answer my questions I'd appreciate it.

Okay, I found the answer to a few of my questions elsewhere in the forum. I see Katrien's special is a skill that when you use it, automatically blocks and counterattacks when an enemy tries to hit you. This is really hard to figure out in training because the dummy can't possibly trigger it. I'm not sure if the peacock warrior's specials work the same either, because in one case he attacks automatically after parrying anyway. Does his move change if it actually counters an attack?

I also noticed I misunderstood how the metagame progression works. I heard that the final boss fight changes when the community reaches certain milestones, but I thought that individual progression was also required to unlock these changes. But apparently that's not the case, I started playing months after the initial release and I immediately went up against the doubleplushard version of the warlock fight. That's pretty crazy. I'm still not confident about going up against the warlock, it just comes down to a damage race now and since I've never been able to fight him one-on-one I don't have a good understanding of his moves and how to defend against them. I have to worry more about his pet hulk to be able to focus on him.

I thought you could break the seal for the first time on your own (by defeating the warlock with all characters or something), and this would unlock the next stage of the final boss fight even when 'officially' the community milestone had already been achieved. I think that's a much more rewarding process for players who arrive at the game after these content updates, as it allows them to go through the same learning curve as the players who have been fighting the warlock since day 1.

Yes, the boss progression is actually community based, and not per player. We originally had plans to allow people to manually select progression states so they could experiment the game's progression at a slower pace, should they get on board later on (like what you are recommending). Unfortunately we never had time to properly implement it.

I think we should try to patch this in the future. I totally agree with you that it can be too overwhelming for newcomers.

About the other questions:

-Leveling does not increase damage.-Harder levels can output larger enemy clusters with higher chances of difficult enemies of spawning, enemy AI is better, more environmental hazards in the level, certain tiles have a higher chance of appearing, and chests/secrets should give better equipment/weapons. Bosses shouldn't change as far as I remember (maybe AI goes up a bit)...-Game automatically saves in purgatory, so you shouldn't lose your weapons if you quit after beating the game. Is this not the case for you?-Living beast has a random chance of appearing each time you move through surface levels. Initial chance of appearing is fixed for individual sessions, but if you beat the game and cycle back to the start there are rules that prevent it from reappearing too often. -The creepy guy with the hat is the warlock in his human form. His chances of appearing will vary depending of the level of difficulty of the level you are in. He also appears if you wait for too long. There's a higher chance of meeting him in harder levels. His soul cannot be captured.-For using the Tirana monster I recommend watching some combo videos posted at the Steam forums. He's hard to master, but he can output some very long chains if you know how link certain attacks. In any case, I also have a hard time using him

Thanks for the answers! I'm glad to hear you agree with the boss progression issue, I hope you get the opportunity to add this in the future.

QUOTE (Andres Bordeu @ Jun 8 2015, 03:01 PM)

-Game automatically saves in purgatory, so you shouldn't lose your weapons if you quit after beating the game. Is this not the case for you?

No, this doesn't seem to be the case. In more than one occasion I exited the game in purgatory and when I went back and selected Local Game, it didn't offer to resume my last played game and just took me to the character select screen. I went back to yesterday's run and tried it again: it did allow me to continue while I was in the abyss, but as soon as I defeated the warlock and entered purgatory I exited the game. When I started it again, I didn't get the option to continue.

However, if I switch character while I'm there then apparently it does save and put me back in purgatory when I start again. Only the problem is that I don't keep my weapon when I switch characters, and that's a pretty big setback when I already went through about five runs of the same abyss with the level 3 poison rapier.

It's sometimes also better to switch characters to regain your health because exiting the warlock fight on low health and then running into the living beast is pretty much a death sentence. To get around this I've started getting my main character killed on purpose once I've defeated the warlock and the titan before I destroy the mask, because then I can just destroy the mask using the soldier and get all of my health back once I do. You only lose one trinket this way, which is much less punishing than losing your weapon. I'm not sure if you'd consider this an exploit but it would be nice if you could just get a health refill when entering purgatory regardless.

Hmmm. Changing character causes you to lose weapons? We'll have to look into that. It is somewhat difficult to address, since it's mainly a design issue, where different characters can't share weapons.

Yes, if I have a stronger weapon than the default and any trinkets, switching characters will lead to my new character having the default weapon and keep any trinkets. If I switch back, the default stays.

Honestly, I'm fine with being forced to start with your default weapon when picking a new character, because I'm stringing up ridiculous winstreaks when I'm allowed to carry over my level 3 weapon into the next run. If I then pick a character who is underleveled and who I'm not as good playing as, having that awesome weapon makes it significantly easier and diminishes the need to learn to play well with that character.

I think the best solution would be to drop the incompatible weapon when you switch characters instead of replacing it, so you can decide to switch back if you prefer playing with it and pick it back up or leave it behind and continue with another character. That means you can also use this as a free way to restore your health to full but I think being able to do this is fair anyway.

Ok, thanks for the suggestions. We'll keep them in mind. Honestly, we haven't been able to give these design issues much thought since we're pretty swamped with the latest project. Hopefully when we free up some time we can review these things. Abyss feels like it was released so long ago... To me at least.

What are the leaderboard scores measuring? It's just a number, I don't know what it means.

When entering a challenge room as a captured soul, your health gets replenished for both the soul and your main character if you win, but if you enter it as yourself, only you get the health refill and the soul doesn't. Is this intended? It might be more interesting if only the character that entered the challenge room got the refill.

You say the Living Creature appears randomly save for a few rules, but I've noticed that if I re-enter the abyss at the same entrance that I used before, it will never appear, making it quite easy to use the same route over and over again. If I use a different entrance for the same abyss, it almost always appears. Is this intended?

What are the leaderboard scores measuring? It's just a number, I don't know what it means.

This registers the number of times you've personally defeated the Warlock. It gets added to the global counter.

QUOTE (LTK @ Jul 15 2015, 08:08 AM)

When entering a challenge room as a captured soul, your health gets replenished for both the soul and your main character if you win, but if you enter it as yourself, only you get the health refill and the soul doesn't. Is this intended? It might be more interesting if only the character that entered the challenge room got the refill.

Hmmm, you're saying that if you enter as a monster, different than the one you get assigned in the challenge, when you come out both the old monster and your main get replenished? But only the player if you enter without having transformed? (Again, referring to the soul you carried in to the level, and not the one you are assigned in the challenge, right?). If that's so, it's problem a design error, or a bug.

It's more consistent that you'd recover your health only for the character you access with. Agreed.

QUOTE (LTK @ Jul 15 2015, 08:08 AM)

You say the Living Creature appears randomly save for a few rules, but I've noticed that if I re-enter the abyss at the same entrance that I used before, it will never appear, making it quite easy to use the same route over and over again. If I use a different entrance for the same abyss, it almost always appears. Is this intended?

Sounds like another issue. When you are re-accessing are you doing it by beating the game and starting over? Or are you dying sometimes in between?

Hmmm, you're saying that if you enter as a monster, different than the one you get assigned in the challenge, when you come out both the old monster and your main get replenished? But only the player if you enter without having transformed? (Again, referring to the soul you carried in to the level, and not the one you are assigned in the challenge, right?). If that's so, it's problem a design error, or a bug.

Yes. Enter as Katrien holding a monster's soul, win the challenge, and Katrien is healed but not the monster she was holding. Enter as a monster, win the challenge, and both the monster and Katrien are healed. That's what I could gather.

QUOTE

Sounds like another issue. When you are re-accessing are you doing it by beating the game and starting over? Or are you dying sometimes in between?